Flash. Jim Miller
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about organizing than it was about some abstract idea of the Bill of Rights. By standing on a soapbox in the middle of the street they could reach out to the floating unemployed population, disgruntled workers, and others receptive to their message, and educate them about the interests of all workers or agitate them to join a given fight. The goal was to turn those on the outskirts of society away from shame and defeat, and toward anger. They wanted to turn “bums into men.” I looked at a picture of a scruffy crowd listening to a soapboxer at 5th and E, and smiled as I imagined the present day parade of bistros, wine-bars, and trendy meat markets. When I had first visited San Diego back in the eighties, downtown had still been a sailor town of dive bars, strip joints, porno shops, greasy spoons, flop houses, and mom and pop shops. Back at the turn of the century, the Gaslamp was called the Stingeree and 5th and E was Heller’s Corner. The Stingeree was where most of the working-class whites, white-ethnic immigrants, Chinese, and Mexicans lived. It was full of shops, saloons, cheap hotels, gambling houses, opium dens, and prostitutes. Middle- and upper-class ladies used to complain about having to pass by the soapboxers and the grimy throng of workingmen and other ill-clad, shabby-looking characters. All in all, it sounded a lot more fun back in the day than it is now—unless you’re looking for a bad cover band or an overpriced cheese plate.
What kicked off the events that led to the free speech fight was an incident on January 6th, 1912 in which an off-duty cop and real estate man tried to drive his car straight through a street meeting. The crowd rocked his car and slashed his tires even though the Wobbly speaker warned them that this would just give the police an excuse to break up the meeting, which they did. I have to say that after being almost hit by a car, it might be tough for me to show restraint too. I’ve been known to flip off a heedless driver or two in my day, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, after that, Spreckels and his crew saw their opening and pushed San Diego city authorities to pass an ordinance banning street speaking in basically the entire Stingeree District in February 1912. Of course the ban irritated not only the I.W.W. but also a whole range of other folks including the AFL, Socialists, religious leaders and civil libertarians who formed the California Free Speech League to challenge the ban. The I.W.W.’s response was to flood San Diego with thousands of protesters, and when the first waves of the Wobbly army hit town, city authorities passed a “move-on ordinance” that gave police wide powers to break up street meetings and harass “vagrants.”
The Wobblies were pretty disciplined and did everything they could to avoid violence because they knew the cops generally welcomed an excuse to bust heads. San Diego police, however, emboldened by the new laws and egged on by the city’s bosses, didn’t hold back. They waded into crowds with batons flying and beat prisoners all the way to jail. They used fire hoses to knock protesters off their feet, and filled the jails with Wobblies. In jail, the brutality continued with the murder of sixty-five-year-old Michael Hoey, who was savagely beaten by three cops, kicked in the groin multiple times, and left to die on the cement floor of an overcrowded, rat-infested cell. Outside the pen, they shot another Wobbly named Joseph Mikolasek in front of the I.W.W. headquarters. Still, a tough bunch, the Wobblies didn’t get scared off. They kept flooding into town, packing the jails, and singing until it drove the police crazy. In one article I found a quote where a cop whined, “These people do not belong to any country, no flag, no laws, no Supreme Being. I do not know what to do. I cannot punish them. Listen to them singing all the time, yelling and hollering, and telling the jailors to quit work and join the union. They are worse than animals.” Great stuff, I thought.
When police brutality didn’t work, the city fathers ended up resorting to vigilante terror. Working at the behest of the elite, most of the vigilantes were scared middle-class merchants, aspiring real estate men, clerks, off-duty cops, and otherwise-respectable thugs who were just looking for blood sport. This reminded me of the stuff that happened with the cops around the time of the LA riots. Some of the elites such as George Marston and The Sun’s owner, Scripps, didn’t support the I.W.W. but did support the idea of free speech. Most, though, were in line with the reign of terror. As the Union editorial put it, “Hanging is none too good for them and they would be much better dead; for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement.” I think it’s safe to say they weren’t fucking around. So a vigilante army of about 400 men was formed. They met a trainload of incoming Wobblies and beat and tortured 140 men, making them run the gauntlet before sending them bleeding on their walk back to Los Angeles.
I looked over several reports of Emma Goldman’s visit to San Diego. Most people who’ve ever heard of the free-speech fight also know the story of how Goldman, the famous anarchist, was driven out of San Diego by quite a welcoming committee. Met at the Santa Fe depot by a snarling mob of “ladies” screaming for her blood, Goldman was ushered to the US Grant Hotel where the mayor denied her the opportunity to speak to an angry mob in the park across the street below. While this negotiation was taking place, a crew of thugs kidnapped her lover, Ben Reitman, and drove him out to near the Peñasquitos Ranch to meet a pack of vigilantes who proceeded to make him kiss the flag and sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Think of that the next time you’re at a ballgame and I bet you won’t sing. They stripped Reitman, viciously beat him, jammed a cane up his bunghole, nearly twisted his balls off, and branded I.W.W. in his ass with a lit cigar. He was then tarred and feathered and sent north on foot. What interested me, however, was not the story of these legendary anarchists, but the unknown stories of those who were lost to history.
I kept skimming through the articles, some of which I’d seen quoted in books, until I came upon a longer piece in The Sun about the vigilante attacks on free-speech fighters. It gave the basic details but also featured a few “accounts” by victims of the vigilantes. One in particular caught my interest:
They took us from the cattle pen in groups of five. I remember looking up at the back of the fellow in front of me. It was covered in manure as they had made us lie in a pile of cattle dung while we waited for our turns. The first of the thugs I caught sight of had on a constable’s badge and a white handkerchief tied around his left arm. All of them, it turned out had white handkerchiefs on their arms. Most of our captors had a gun or a rifle in one hand and a club or other such weapon in the other. That is unless they had a bottle of whiskey. This gang of fine men of property and law had all got their courage up by getting good and drunk. All the better to be in high spirits while you’re beating unarmed men, I suppose. Well, they pushed, kicked and prodded us along to a spot where they had us each pay our respects to the flag. The kid in front of me, about 17 years old, got smacked in the head with a wagon spoke and he fell to his knees. Kiss it, you F** Son of a B**, Kiss the G** damn flag, they yelled at him. I could see the blood pouring down his face from a head wound. They had no mercy with him, despite his youth. After he performed their profane ritual, he ran the gauntlet of over a hundred men, each one taking a swing with a club, a bat, or some other weapon. By the end of the line, the kid was crawling through the dirt, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Next they made Giovanni, “the priest” we used to call him on account of his preaching all the time about non-violence, kiss the flag and sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Get it right you Dago Son of a B***, one of the bigger thugs yelled before kicking the back of his legs to bring him to his knees. For Giovanni, the worst was not the spit on his face after his song was complete, but the first horrible blow he took from a wagon spoke with a big spike driven through the end. Giovanni had failed to get his arms up in time and it pegged him straight in the forehead. He went down with a thud and didn’t move. He was kicked and poked with more than a few bats and clubs until one of the sharper wits in the pack of wolves got the idea to drag him away and dump his limp body off to the side. I never heard word of Giovanni after that. Lots of fellas went down that way, with no one to remember ’em.
After Giovanni got dragged away, they took big Jacob, or “the Kike” as they called him. They seemed to take a special liking to beating the Jews, Catholics, and Mexicans in our unfortunate little parade. For Jacob, one of the off-duty men of the law selected a hose filled with gravel and tacks. I heard him scream after the first swing and then I was struck from behind by the butt of a pistol and my knees were taken out by a couple swings of a bat. I guess I was a bit too much of a mess